Mobile devices such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), e-book readers, and other devices, are becoming increasingly prevalent in the lives of consumers. As a result, consumers are able to use mobile devices to conveniently communicate and conduct transactions with virtually anyone—including providers of goods and services.
The use of mobile devices to conduct transactions with transit systems is somewhat limited. Instead of having user accounts with information about individual transit users, transit systems typically utilize fare media with stored value that may not require any information regarding the transit user. This makes transactions with a transit system, such as purchases of transit products or retrieval of information regarding fare media particularly difficult.